Lawmatters.in

Usually, when the subject of NRI marriages is brought up, people speak either of how sought after they are or about how wives in such marriages supposedly use the allegedly draconian provisions of Section 498 A of the Indian Penal Code (which makes cruelty to wives an offence) to “torture” their husbands and in-laws who are, of course, invariably innocent of being cruel and unsuspecting of what’s in store for them. In its 219th Report though, it has been reported that the Law Commission has not confined itself to this supposed abuse of the law.

The Report which is entitled ‘Need for Family Law Legislation for Non-Resident Indians’ the Commission has spoken of the widespread practice of NRIs — usually men — marrying Indian spouses and then abandoning them whenever it strikes their fancy. The women — because it usually is women — usually do not come from families as well off as those they married into, and, in most cases, there’s precious little they can do about having been dumped.

In some cases, the marriages are not even legally valid and the women barely have any rights worth speaking of. Getting any form of alimony is often impossible, and such wives often wind up quite a bit worse off than they were before they got married.

In order to try to deal with such situations, the Law Commission has made a number of recommendations to ‘ensure compliance of the conditions of a valid marriage, to provide proof of marriage, and to act as a deterrent against bigamous practices’. The recommendations include the compulsory registration of marriages where one spouse is an NRI, requiring that the concerned High Commission or Embassy be given copies of the marriage documents, and having states like Punjab with high NRI populations set up fast track courts to inter alia resolve matrimonial and custody issues in such cases expeditiously.

In terms of legislative measures, the Commission has suggested that marriage laws such as the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act be amended to specifically provide for the maintenance and alimony of spouses, the custody of children and the division of matrimonial property in such cases. It has also suggested the creation of a single uniform legislation for the adoption of Indian children by NRIs.

Even if these recommendations are acted upon though, it will be some time before they actually help women who have been abandoned by NRI husbands.